Composer
Benigno Zerafa showed a great attraction to music since his early childhood, as a boy soprano in the Mdina Cathedral’s cappella di musica. He received his early musical instruction from maestro Pietro Gristi.
Zerafa was born in Rabat, the fifth of eight children, to a family residing in the vicinity of the Santo Spirito Hospital, a location convenient for his father, Nicola, a surgeon by profession.
At the age of 9 the Cathedral Chapter accepted him as a deacon (Clericus cori) whose duties, for an annual salary of ten scudi, included singing the plainchant responses during liturgy. On 4 September 1737, at the age of eleven, he petitioned Bishop Fra Paolo Alpheran de Bussan to be accepted as a treble in the Cathedral’s cappella di musica. On the advice of the Cathedral deputies for Music, the bishop granted Zerafa’s petition and doubled his annual stipend.
Benigno, now came under the instruction of Pietro Gristi, the Cathedral’s maestro di cappella, who started training him.
Gristi’s death in 1738, raised the problem of a suitable replacement. None being found either in Italy or in Malta, the Cathedral Chapter decided to send a promising young musician to Naples to be suitably trained.
This was Benigno Zerafa and at the age of 12 years was sent to Naples on 8 July 1738. He was financed by a loan of 165 scudi provided by the Chapter. He studied at the Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesù Cristo under Francesco Feo, Alfonso Gaggi and Gerolamo Abos between 1738 and 1744.
On 25 August 1746, Zerafa celebrated his 20th birthday. By that time he had already composed 17 liturgical works for the Cathedral. In his study Benigno Zerafa (1726-1804): a biography, Mgr John Azzopardi, gave the various steps leading to Zerafa’s ordination: receipt of tonsure – 13 January 1747; minor orders – 21 January 1747; subdeaconate – 30 March 1748; deaconate – 21 September 1748. Zerafa was ordained priest by Bishop Alpheran de Bussan in his episcopal palace in Valletta on 19 September 1750. This represented an accelerated progression, relative to what is stipulated by the Council of Trent. According to Bishop de Bussan, he permitted Zerafa to receive the subdeaconate, and the deaconship, just after he was 22 years (instead of the stipulated 23 years of age), and the priesthood two years later, when he had just turned 24 - which means one year earlier than decreed by the edict of the Council of Trent. It is to be noted that, at the time, the Church hierarchy insisted that the Cathedral’s maestro had to have the dignity of priesthood, since the position was so intimately connected with the enactment of the sacred liturgy.
In 1744 Zerafa was appointed Maestro di Cappella of the Cathedral, a post he retained till his death in 1804.
Zerafa’s shortcomings seem to have been a stubborn character and the total lack of a sensible money management. These weaknesses were the probable cause of his dismissal from his post in 1751, but he was reinstated two years later with an even better salary.
In 1773 the relationship between Zerafa and Francesco Azopardi (1748-1809), his contemporary, began to deteriorate. In April 1774 the Chapter appointed Azopardi, as the Cathedral’s new organist. The Chapter granted him the right of future succession to that position, and it became more evident to push forward Azopardi’s claims.
In December 1786 Zerafa sent a petition to Bishop Labini, where he admits that for the last years, his health had deteriorated. In January 1787 Zerafa had agreed to donate his sacred scores, under certain conditions, to the Cathedral and to be retired to Ta’ Saura home, where all his physical needs could be catered for, and ensuring that he would no longer be in the public eye. In return he was granted a present of 100 scudi, and was also allowed to retain his position as maestro di cappella for whatever value this now had given that Azopardi was filling the duties connected with that post. In fact it was when Zerafa died that Azopardi achieved the satisfaction of knowing that the position he had desired for so many years was finally and irrefutably his.
Zerafa’s works show a certain familiarity with contemporary European tendencies. Zerafa’s musical output during his forty years of service as Maestro di Cappella of the Cathedral is quite prolific. It is almost exclusively sacred music, encompassing virtually all major contemporary genres and styles of liturgical and devotional music; large multi-movement orchestral masses and psalm-settings, cantata-motets, litanies, antiphomes, lamentations and responsaries.
While remaining sensitive to the musical traditions of the church in which he was educated, as a true craftsman, he was always open to new ideas and contemporary musical developments.
This biography is part of the collection created by Michael Schiavone over a 30-year period. Read more about Schiavone and his initiative here.